They're the description of the format you want to receive. Usually they'd be CSVs, but they can be XML, JSON, or any format you want.
The idea is that you (or your customers) will want to send files that exactly match this template, without the burden of knowing your exact format 😀
And WeTransform will do that transformation for you. From the file sent ➔ the target template.
Your target format can be anything as
CSV
XML
JSON
Custom format
A template precisely describes the format, data type, columns that you want to receive, whether it is the file type, or the actual content of the data.
Simple use case:
Say you want to transform a CSV file into a different CSV file, with different columns, different constraints. Templates are describing the target to which you are going to transform your file into. WeTransform will then help you tranform the initial CSV file into a file compatible with the target template.
Step 1) Configure your target template
Step 2) Send a file that you want to transform to your template's format
Share with customers use case :
When you need to collaborate with customers, you need to specify the Access for your templates : either public or restricted
Public access: anyone with the template link can send you filesRestricted access: only customers who are authorized to the template can send you files
When you are about to share your template with your customers, make sure that your template is active and that customers are authorized for it, either because it is a public template, or because they are specifically authorized.
You can share your templates using two methods:
Embed to your own application
Share the template link :
your-company.send-a-file.io
Template constraints
Templates can have many constraints
File format
File size
Columns formats
List of valid values
You can specify the file format in the template's general settings, and the file size in the push settings.
Column constraints include the type of data they accept (text, number, boolean etc) whether they are mandatory, accept only unique values, as well as precise constraints (must contain x characters, begin by such prefix, or even follow a particular regular expression). Learn more about the detailed constraints here.
List of valid values are particular constraints: when your column accepts only a determined list of values. It is often the case for a list of country codes, or list of genders, list of sizes etc.
You can define if you accept to receive files containing errors or if files you receive must be totally error free. In most cases, if you embed WeTransform into your application, you might want to specify an error free format.
To change this go to your template and then push setting.
Important: make sure that you have setup WeTransform with all the constraints you need, to ensure that all errors will be caught before the resulting file is actually sent to you.
Recurring vs one time sending
If you want to save all the steps that you do when you send a file, that's where transform configurations are useful.
If you want WeTransform to save transform configurations for your templates, you need to mark your templates as recurring.
If you don't need to save your transform configurations, you can setup your template as one-time file sending. That would be the case if you only have to upload a file once into a system, and never need to make updates to it.
With each constraint you setup, you can define a particular error handling scenario that will guide your customer into dealing with the error when the constraint is not met.
To learn more about implementing error handling and constraints visit this page.